Lots of Thoughts

This is mainly just a lot of random thoughts that have been stewing in my brain and I wanted to get them down so I don't lose them.

• I like to watch the watcher.  While other people look at the action of things, I am often a few steps ahead wondering how people are interpreting the data and see what resonates with people.  In some ways I am missing out on the beauty of the moment and the intent for which someone is presenting deliberate information, but in other ways, I see a bigger more fulsome picture of a particular scenario.  Kind of like watching how the sausage is made rather than eating the sausage.  I am fascinated by how people operate.
• Working on my own has made me strive for perfection.  While this is a good thing, I realize that the bar that I set for myself is higher than those set for others around me.  I am hard on myself when I don't accomplish a task to the level which I feel I can maintain, but when I look at others, I realize we are all full of imperfections and striving to do well, and many fail while others succeed.  The thing is, there is no repercussions either way, other than my own self-criticism.  
• I always feel like i am acting.  Maybe that is why theatre has always come naturally to me.  When I am at work, I feel like I am acting like a bureaucrat and when I am in my personal life, I often feel like I am acting to present a version of myself that will resonate with the other party.  I am working on merging these versions to present my true self, but it is often difficult when people have pre-conceived ideas of who you are.  People are reluctant to change, and when presented with a situation, they gravitate toward their past understanding of a given person, regardless of whether that version of the situation no longer exists.
• Sometimes I have to remember that I exist and think in different ways than most people.  It has taken me years to REALLY grasp this idea.  We always tell kids that they are unique and special, but it has only come to my attention over the past couple of years how unique my train of thought, skillset, and mindset truly are.  I have to remember that if I am truly blazing my own trail and trusting my own instinct, I can't rely on others to understand me or have my ideas resonate with others as my mindset has been crafted over years of bucking trends while trying to maintain a status quo and to be successful.  I have used skills that most of my friend group either don't use or don't have access to.   In so many ways I feel like I have been carving my life out with a hammer and chisel and now I have been handed a whole new toolset including a microscope, scalpel, and many smoothing tools to better polish the version of myself that I need to be for me. 
• https://www.cbc.ca/books/just-once-no-more-by-charles-foran-1.6816966   If I haven't already done so, I want to pick up this book as a CBC interview with Charles Foran really resonated with me.  
• I have printed this list, but need to remember when I am feeling low in the morning, here is my routine to bring me to a good place:

1. Wordle
2. Make bed
3. Shower/Bath
4. Hot Tub
5. Alan Watts
6. Music - Peaceful, upbeat, motivating, energetic
7. guitar - acoustic, electric
8. protein shake
9. keep moving.  
10. plan day.
11. Gym - stretch, workout, chest, abs, arms, bike.  
12. Sauna, Steam Room, Shower
13. Biking, walking, beaches, hiking

Feeling my liminal peak slipping

It has been a while since I have posted here.  I am finding it harder to reach into the liminal place that I have spent so long.  I am really hoping that I can hang on longer, but I can feel the real world slipping back in.  

I hope to get back to this moment some day.  I realize that all lows must have highs and all highs must have lows.  I hit my absolute lowest moment when Andrew died, and I have now stretched my highest high to this particular moment in my life.  I have hit such a high in my self awareness, my relationship with Cheryl, my own internal value and my value to those around me.  I see the beauty of watching my kids learn lessons that I failed to grasp at their age and the simplicity and inevitability of the journey both behind and ahead of me.

Along with the beauty of the highest high is the realization and awareness that it can't last.  I am trying to enjoy and squeeze the truth out of the moment knowing that my high will slip into mediocre and possibly low and this could happen at any moment and could be either gradual or instantaneous. 

The beauty of the high is the ephemeral knowledge that it is fleeting.  Like the first flap of bird's wing or the first step of a child, it happens but once.  Anything else is a faded shaded copy. The high can't last. And that is not only ok, but good, because that means the lows also can't last.  The darkest image, the hurtful resentment, the words forever scarred, but with time they recede and lead us back to mediocre and maybe. hopefully. another high.

In the end, it is this high/low process that unifies us all, the constant striving to find our place and to feel peace and connected to the world around us.  

A Mind at Peace

In this world you only have so many chances to look at your memories and remember them before they disappear so all of the lasts becoming infinitely important. Last breaths, last loves, last smells, last hugs, last intimate moments.  If this were to be my last trip with Cheryl I would be so satisfied. 

I woke this morning still on Italian time ruminating about the adventure of the past 2 weeks.  It was no doubt the biggest adventure of our lives and Cheryl and I did it together.  It was like 20 of our "down south trips" wrapped into one and then multiplied exponentially by the beauty and romance of Italy making it invaluable and worth every penny and second we spent on it.  I would gladly double what we paid if I knew how close it would bring us.

Random Thoughts by Tim

• Fingerprint scanners on phones are not an exact science.  You hammer away in dfferent combinations and permutations to try to get a complete picture.  Sometimes, the number gets stuck at the same place and seems to resist natural progression, but the more you hammer away and adjust and adapt, the full picture will be revealed eventually. Such is life.  The more we put ourselves out there into different situations outside our comfort zonei, the more we develop a clearer picture of the real world around us.  
• So many people I know don't have their kids in their lives and my kids are such a great support to me and knowing that they want to come home and are happy to be here and sharing.  I don't think I fully grasp how unique and how good this is at this particular moment in my life I really need this right now
• One of the incorrect things that I learned from Mom is that showing vulnerability will make you look weak, when it is the reverse that is true: showing vulnerability allows people to feel connected to you 
• In so many ways throughout my life, I was more focused on who I thought I was then who I actually was.  
• Each one of us is more than our worst momenta and decisions.
• Some people have a negative narrative constantly playing in their heads, but the worst of these are those who cannot control the flow and it oozes and seeps from all of their pores.  Unable to see the beauty around them, they slither grunt their discontentment at anything that resembles an ear.
• Gordon Lightfoot described songwriting as like going to the dentist.  Painful but necessary.  I feel that way about all of my writing, but while it is painful and hard, it is also cathartic and inevitable.  For me, word choice and nuance are essential and clarifying.
• Interesting perspective from our trip to Italy.  While North Americans picture Christopher Columbus as arriving in America, Italians picture it as 3 ships leaving for a new land.  
• All of the money and pretty things in the world cant buy your peace.
• Italy...a patchwork of makeshift wolutions that generally works.
• Song lyric - I might be a little light-headed,  but baby I'm always clear-headed with you.

Zoning out in Italy

I had planned to write here each day to capture each Italian memory a it blew by, but as is evident by the past few posts, the hypnotic allure of Italy got to me and words failed to materialize in the moment.  

So, instead, I write this belated post within 24 hours of return home in the hopes that some of the memories and images are still solidly enough in my brain to try to capture before they drift away like so much pollen and memories into the air.

I struggle to write authentically here because everything I write sounds trite and pedantic when I really want to express the true and genuine beauty of the past 2 weeks. In truth, this trip has been 50 years in the making.  It is the next step in my personal growth.  I have come to so many realizations about who I am and what has shaped my life and the type of person I want to be in this world.  

In many ways, I have shaped myself to adapt to new situations to "get along" and "not rock the boat" as if it was some kind of prize for being agreeable.  By trying to adapt myself to others and not fully embracing my internal nature, it has made it difficult to "find my people" over the years as I can get along with most people.

Facebook, through it has lots of flaws, provides an interesting perspective on who and what is resonating with people.  I realized through the responses to my posts in Italy who is responding to my posts and who is generally interested in what I have to say.  That is my audience.  There is no sense catering posts for people who are not interested, much in the same way as is futile to cater to people who are not interested in you.  Facebook allows you to see who seems generally interested in your point of view.  This can also become dangerous, however as historically, when too many like-minded people get together and go well or extremely poorly.

That was a long rambling distracting paragraph, but I am playing into just letting the thoughts come out.

Back to Italy.  I have said it so many times over the past week that what the Italians lack in efficiency and convenience, they more than make up for in style in class.  This is true, but after my initial visit, I wonder about the future of Italy.  Undoubtedly, their past is filled with beauty and historical significance, but, in my limited travel, albeit in areas aimed at tourists, I wonder about the future of countries that dwell so much on the past.  Particularly when at each historic site, there are vendors selling cheap plastic models of everything from boxers with a replica of the Statue of David's Penis on the front to tacky touristy dildos in Pompeii.  Does the touristy side circus negate the historical value that the world is being sold about these places of significance?  

I am no stranger to hawking crap to tourists, coming from the land of Anne with an E, but somehow I thought that these historic sites would be different, perhaps due to their historical significance, rather than a fictional red-headed character.   The reality, though, was that, it was exactly the same, albeit on a massive scale.  It is explained how valuable and irreproducible something is, and then they offer you reproductions.

With AI being such a hot topic recently, I wonder about the value of this deep rich history, when a robot could paint in the style of Leonardo Da Vinci, but with a multitude of possibilities.  The Sistine Chapel, but darker, or bigger, or happier or angrier.  It makes me wonder about the intrinsic value of art in general, as well as the nature and accuracy of our history where we have place so much value on finding shortcuts to make human life easier that we are now on the cusp of machines being able to provide our entertainment.  TV, movies, dance, theatre, art, writing, and who knows what new forms of entertainment are still as-of-yet  discovered.  

The question for me is what do humans do now once so much of our basic existence is provided for and on a side arc and a story for another time, how can we still have war?  maybe AI will help us to see beyond our own ignorance.  Or it could go horribly wrong.

Rome to florence

A 4 hour scenic bus ride from Rome to Florence seems like a great time to think about life and goals and wonder about the future.

• We are nested into the back corner of the bus soft sounds of peaceful meditation tickling my ears.  The green hills and castles atop mountains remind me that this land is so much older than. The red soil of pei.   Slaves, kings, dynasties have all lived and died here.  Fuelled by tradition it would be futile for this land to change and adapt now.  But strong it stands.  120 feet deep of concrete remnants of worlds i will never know bridging into then past as I strive for the future while resisting the immediacy of the now.  
• I kiss cheryl so she will remember this moment.
• She is confused 
• We emerge from the tunnel anew.  New land.   New challenges. New style.  New outlook.  New people.
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